


Four Seasons, Four Loves

by Lulzy (likelolwhat)



Series: For the Love of a Meme [13]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Community: skyrimkinkmeme, F/M, Original Character Death(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Skyrim Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 03:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2677514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likelolwhat/pseuds/Lulzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each of her lovers was like a season, but only one was never-ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Seasons, Four Loves

**Author's Note:**

> De-anoning from the skyrimkinkmeme, [this prompt](http://skyrimkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4941.html?thread=10386509#t10386509).

She would realize, later, that she was lucky to find him after only three previous lovers. At the time, though, she did not count herself lucky at all.

Her first lover was a Redguard like herself; a fumble in the dark nights of the desert. But unlike the scorching sands of her homeland, Nazeem was as brisk and short as a winter's day. Always going on about advising kings, he was, and she got tired of his boasting and his snide attitude. When circumstances forced them apart, she wasn't sad to see him go.

Next was Zander, an Imperial she met in her time collecting bounties in the West Weald. They were rivals for a while, while she was still adjusting to her new life, but as the weeks went on she outmatched him more and more. Zander acknowledged her talent and from then on they were a team, laughing, joking, teasing each other in and out of the sack. More than once they took down a necromancer or bandit chief together and celebrated in the dead target's bed. That summer was slow to start, but when the rains stopped at last Cyrodiil burst into glorious color.

But like summer, it was not to last. They were teasing each other as usual, in a cave. Zander spun around as he walked ahead, to see her reaction to some silly, insignificant jibe. He skipped backwards directly into a swinging mace trap.

Complacent, overconfident. Summer's burst was over as soon as it came.

The next spring found her in Skyrim, and the new life in the wilderness clashed sharply with the land's obsession with death. Everywhere, death. She saw her own reaching for her too many times to count, but she always woke up alive. More than once she found herself taking comfort as the Nords do: in sweet drink, in snatches of defiant laughter, in the warmth of a bed not her own.

In Ralof's soft snores beside her, in the blond's easy smile and passionate eyes.

But that passion was not for her, and as the buds turned to leaves, he had to return to his king, to his cause. Though her heart weighed her down the morning she woke and he was no longer there, she'd learned something of the ways of the Nords: _life is short, love while you can_.

So she turned north, wandered the coast from Solitude to Windhelm. Heard much, saw much, understood little.

As autumn came, the winds blew bone-slicing off the Sea of Ghosts, driving her south once more. Into the cold arms of the Thieves Guild.

There she found the one person in the world more broken than she was at the time. The skittish Breton with the wide, darting eyes... The rumors were there, that someone had rescued him from the Thalmor Embassy, but she didn't believe anyone could survive that and not be catatonic. Until they grew to be friends, and one night she put a hand on his shoulder. It was supposed to be a comforting gesture, a small thing, but it was for neither of them: he spooked at the touch, whirling around with terror in his eyes. As for her, the raised scars she felt even through his armor proved the tales told true.

Though he expected her to run — she could see it in his eyes even as he calmed down — she did not. _Life is short, love while you can_ — the words, echoing in her like Mara herself had whispered in her ear.

_Fate. Two lonely hearts as one._

It didn't matter.

She stayed by him, held him through the nightmares and the flashbacks and the twinges in his scars, and he taught her to love again, as easily as ever and with as much meaning as never before. Together they weathered all storms: the haunting of memories, the betrayal from within, the fire in the sky.

They were like autumn, indeed: the cold was nipping and the trees were shedding, but those leaves fell to the ground to insulate the distant flowers of spring against the bitterness of winter.


End file.
